Decades ago, we were in Boston for one of Meda’s academic conferences. It was likely 1995 when the American Society of Criminology met there in Boston. We walked around quite a bit, and several blocks from the Boston Commons we spotted an antique shop. This wasn’t not one of those upscale stores with everything clean and polished and high priced, but the kind with rows of dusty things in piles, in boxes, and under foot. We had fun scouring the store, and then spotted an oil painting of a Hawaii scene on the wall.

The scene depicted Pearl Harbor in the distance, storm clouds overhead, and in the foreground the Sumida family’s watercress farm, with their fields running down to the shoreline. The farm has been credited with growing two-thirds of HaawaIt was a great find!

The painting was signed “Joe Voges, 1945.”

After a little haggling, it was ours. I don’t remember anything about the flight home, so we must have found a way to stuff it into an overhead bin. And it occupied a central spot on the wall in our living room in our Kaaawa for over 20 years.

I tried several times to locate the artist, and failed. Then in mid-2003, I made another round of phone calls. This time, Bingo!

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